Whitewashed
A song came on my iTunes today, as I was multi-tasking before my next class, and thinking through recent events in my life. I was not expecting the song to have much of an impact on my day, but it's starting to.
The gist of the song is to encourage the listener to open up about who he/she is despite flaws and past mistakes.
When I first heard the artist, Jill Phillips, it was during the summer at Camp Greystone when I was starting high school. She came to a tiny town in the mountains of North Carolina to sing to a bunch of young girls and tell her story through her music.
This song is still making an impact on me, even when I don't feel open to hearing truthful words. It's especially hard to believe these words when someone you care about has made it clear that past mistakes can't be forgotten or forgiven.
I'll highlight just a few of the most impactful verses below:
"I can see the fear behind your eyes Wondering of someone will recognize You've grown tired of keeping up the lies
Don't whitewash the truth about yourself 'cause Nobody's got it all together If you want to be like everyone else well Nobody's got it all together
I have seen the darkness of my heart And found a love that taught me it's too hard To walk through life and not let down my guard
When the parts that are self-righteous Start to disappear Every other life is Just another mirror 'Cause life is way too short to run and hide
What good is it to say "Please Savior, come" If there is nothing you need rescue from Life is something no one has a corner on"
One of my favorite words from this song is whitewash. It paints (no pun intended) a really nice picture of what we try to do to cloak ourselves in front of other people. For example, when you whitewash a fence, you put on a coat of paint, but it's thin and watered-down. It doesn't entirely cover up the wood; you can still see the grains, grooves, and gouges that are beneath the surface. When we try to pretend that we have it all together, it's like whitewashing the pain and imperfections in our life.
Whitewashing is rooted in the self-righteous behavior that Jill sings about in the bridge. When we value our pride, we want to cover up what we're ashamed of. But the truth is, we're all broken and imperfect, made up of the same damaged and weather-torn pieces of lumber trying to look like a perfect picketed fence.